


never give up

by salazarastark



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: 5 Things, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Minor Chirrut Îmwe/Baze Malbus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-18
Updated: 2019-04-18
Packaged: 2020-01-11 17:55:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18429149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salazarastark/pseuds/salazarastark
Summary: 5 things that connects Jyn to Rogue One





	never give up

**Author's Note:**

  * For [colls](https://archiveofourown.org/users/colls/gifts).



> The title of the fic is taken from Sia's song of the similar name.
> 
> I have to thank jaegermighty on the incredible beta work!

**_one_ **

Jyn wakes up in the infirmary, every part of her body aching. She remembers getting into the ship and being taken up into the sky, but everything after that is a blur of pain.

The infirmary is white and sterile, bursting with medical droids. She’s at the end of a long row of beds filled with all her human squad members. They all have their eyes closed. Bodhi and Chirrut are in bacta tanks, and Baze and Cassian are in an unconscious state that seems too still to just be sleeping. She turns over to her other side to find K-2 watching her, head tilted.

“You are awake,” he says.

“Yeah,” she croaks out through dry lips. “Unfortunately.”

“It is not unfortunate to be alive,” K-2 says with remarkable simplicity and conviction that Jyn almost agrees with him. “Especially not when all your friends are alive as well.”

She doesn’t say anything, merely turns over to look at her squad members again. Cassian is in the closest bed next to her, his hair shaggy and mussed. Jyn’s fingers twitch as she fights the urge to lean over and brush it off his face.

“How did we survive?” she asks.

“Bodhi prevented a grenade from the entering the ship and was able to save Baze and Chirrut, who were able to save me, and I was able to save you. You had all sustained wounds however, and you are the first to wake up. Besides me of course. Honestly, I don’t understand why some bots want to have flesh, it’s so _fragile_.”

Jyn’s lips quirk at K-2’s last sentence, face spasming before she bursts into high, hysterical laughter. It’s not very funny, not at all, but there’s just something about his tone of voice and being alive that makes it one of the most hilarious things she’s ever heard.

She hears him scoff next to her, which somehow manages to send her into a new spiral of laughter.

“Why are you laughing?” K-2 asks. “I said nothing humorous at all.”

“I know,” she gasps out, “it was so stupid!” She collapses into another fit of giggles.

“I am going to get one of the medics,” he announces, and a small edge of worry almost seems to creep into his voice. “Obviously you have some brain damage that has gone unnoticed and it must be healed.”

“Wait, wait, no,” she says though her laughter, grasping where his wrist would be if he was flesh and blood as he attempts to get up. “I’m sorry, but I know I don’t have brain damage.”

“Really?” K-2 replies incredulously.

“Yes,” she says, forcing herself to get her laughter under control, though her face still spasms as she wants to start up again. “It’s hysterical laughter, K-2. I’m not laughing because I find it funny, I’m laughing because that’s just how my mind needs to relieve stress and adrenaline. It’s perfectly normal.”

“Ah,” and she hears the slight tone of disgust in his voice. “You humans really are poorly made, aren’t you?”

“We are,” she giggles.

“You really need someone to take care of you,” he adds on next, and Jyn looks at him closely. His posture seems to be slouched over, if it’s possible for a droid to do so, and if he were human, Jyn would say to was both wary and hopeful, and for the love of every single fucking god in the _galaxy_ , why can't she stop laughing?

“We probably do,” she sputters out. “Are you volunteering?”

“I suppose I am,” K-2 says. “I have heard talk about sending Rogue Squad out on missions once you are healed and willing, and you need someone to make sure that no one is seriously injured.”

Well, it stops the laughter.

Jyn looks at K-2 in shock. She had never considered the possibility of staying once she had completed the mission. She had never gotten used to the feeling of staying in one place with the same people for so long. Saw had given her up when she was young, and she remembered the burning pain as he had turned her away from their life, forced her to go on her path. The feeling flicks itself into her throat, giving her the smallest knot, but she forces it down.

There is something appealing about staying with the Rogue Squad, with the Rebellion, that she has never felt before. She fights down the instinct to look at Cassian, but she cannot escape the sight of him shifting slightly in his bed next to her.

“Al-alright,” Jyn says softly, focusing on K-2 and ignoring Cassian. “I suppose we will need someone to make sure we can get out of the scraps we will inevitably find ourselves in.”

K-2 lets out a heaving sigh. “I know.”

She smiles at that, and now that the laughter has left her system, she finds the feeling of tiredness in weighing her down, and she wants so badly to go to sleep. K-2 must be reading her, because he slowly and uncertainty covers her up, and she falls back into the darkness, this time without pain.

**_two_ **

Jyn likes watching Bodhi work on the ship. She has always enjoyed watching people give themselves up to something they truly enjoy and Bodhi enjoys piecing together the ship and figuring out new ways to make it work better and better. So when Jyn finds herself unable to think or sleep or breathe or focus on anything, she makes her way to the ship and hopes that Bodhi will be working on something. She focuses on how his fingers move and dance as he slots together two different pieces of metal, as he somehow makes something incredible and makes it look like a breeze.

Right now, she has tucked herself into the cockpit as he’s on his side, figuring something out with the wiring that he claims will make the ship go a few minutes faster. In a space battle, even a second can matter, let alone minutes, so she sits quietly and just watches him work.

The silence is companionable, and they have never really talked in these times. But today, Bodhi aims to change that. He asks, slowly and carefully like he’s afraid she’ll run away if he does it too suddenly (and that’s smart, because she has done it before), “If you have any questions about your father, I would be more than happy to answer them.”

Jyn’s mouth goes dry, and she refuses to look at Bodhi, even though she knows that he is resolutely not looking at her, but rather focusing on the task in front of him. She remembers her father, she remembers him calling her “Stardust,” and she remembers that she has grown into a woman that he would not recognize.

(Though he had recognized her, didn’t he? On the brig. He had known who she was after so many years.)

“Maybe,” she finally says. “I don’t want to bring up any bad memories for you.”

She turns to look at Bodhi in time to see him shrug. “I don’t have bad memories of him. Mine are all good. He was my friend and my mentor, and if you want to know the man I knew, I would tell you all about him.”

Jyn does not know what she wants him to tell her. What a good man her father was when he was building an instrument of death? What he might have told Bodhi about her, about a once eight year old and a now stranger? She loves and hates Bodhi’s offer, how he is willing to share his memories and how she wishes he kept them to himself so she didn’t have to choose.

“Maybe later,” she then says flatly. “It might be nice to hear some old stories.”

He knows she’s lying, but he doesn’t call her out on it, not even as he watches her leave the ship.

They awkwardly move around each other the next few days. She cannot say what his offer means to her yet, and he doesn’t want to push her. It’s picked up on by everyone else, but no one says anything.

No one except Cassian, who seems to find the slightest hint of discord in their ranks as something that must be sniffed out and crushed.

It is something that Jyn admires about him at times, but in others, like now, she wishes he would just mind his own business.

He confronts her in the mess hall, coming to sit right in front of her while she eats.

“What’s going on between you and Bodhi?” he asks gently.

“What makes you think something’s going on?” she asks casually, as she slowly picks at her food.

“You two are avoiding each other,” he responds bluntly. “If there’s something going on between you two, you need to resolve it now so it won’t get us in trouble down the road.”

“I won’t let anything happen to Bodhi just because things got a little awkward between us,” she snaps, looking at him.

“I know you won’t,” Cassian says, “but I’m not talking about a mission. I’m talking about the fabric of this group. I find it working well just the way it is, and I don’t want that to be ruined just because neither of you can use your words.”

Honestly the thought of using her words sounds like hell, but Jyn is a big girl and forces herself to nod at Cassian’s earnest request. She does like the squad, and if things get blown to hell, Jyn knows that she’s going to have to be the one to leave.

Cassian leaves her to her thoughts, and Jyn eats her meal as slowly as she possibly can before she goes looking for Bodhi.

As always, he’s in the ship, now working on something to do with the . . . air filtration? She thinks, but she’s not sure.

She stands there for a few moments before he notices her, jumping back a small amount and then smiling brightly at her. “Jyn,” he says warmly, like she hasn’t been ignoring him and trying to push a distant between them for a week, one that she would still be building if Cassian hadn’t come talk to her. “What are you doing here? Is there anyth-?”

“I don’t want to hear about my father,” she feels the words fly out of her mouth before she can stop them, and Bodhi jerks back in surprise, blinks his eyes in shock. “I don’t want to hear about what a great man you thought he was or the fun times he had or the stories he told you about me and my mother. I don’t want to hear about the annoying things he did to make him seem more human. I don- I don’t want to hear about any of that.”

Jyn prays he does not ask for an explanation, because she does not think that she could give it. Her father is not her father but he is her father and she loves him and she hates him and right now, at the very least, she cannot bear to know more than that.

“Alright,” Bodhi shrugs with a warm smile on his face. “I won’t say another word about him.”

Jyn nods, feeling pathetically grateful for his kindness and his decision not to say anything. She sits down on one of the seats, and she watches him work.

**_three_ **

Jyn likes listening to Chirrut hum. He has a low, soothing voice, and it reminds her of the rushing waterfall at her favorite of Saw’s bases. The smooth cadence, the way she can just close her eyes and breathe. It’s nice. Her room is right next to Chirrut and Baze’s, and he’ll hum as he gets ready for bed. She can hear it through the vent near her bed, and she’ll curl up in bed and listen.

She feels like a voyeur, but his humming is the only thing she pays attention to. She doesn’t have as many nightmares when she hears his voice. Jyn has already made peace with the fact that she’s a bad person.

So she listens and she sleeps and she lets the soft hum fall over her like a wave.

She gets up each day feeling refreshed and only slightly guilty, but she does not think about the fact that she is learning these songs, and well, Jyn has a habit for picking up small talents.

She catches herself humming Chirrut’s song at odd moments in the day, though luckily when no one else is around, just when she wants to fill the silence. She bites her tongue, curses herself for doing so, and reverts back into the silence she had learned with Saw and his soldiers. Keeping out of their way so she can have some peace and mourn how her life had changed since she lost her parents and was forced into this revolution. Somehow, she just learned how to be silent and still until now.

Rogue One has softened her, and she is glad for that in some ways, but in other ways, in these ways, she finds herself annoyed that she cannot keep her walls stacked high.

She does it once around Cassian, and he looks at her strangely for a moment, before carefully telling her that she has a nice voice, and she rides that compliment for the rest of the day.

It was inevitable however, that she would hum around Chirrut, and of course, he would recognize his song. She did not expect his reaction though.

He stops what he is doing, which is meditating, and that’s another thing that Jyn has disturbed, that she has done wrong. She waits for the tongue lashing, for the recriminations, but there is nothing. All he does is smile.

And then at night, he hums a different song. Jyn can’t help herself. She curls up on her bed as small as she can, hugs herself tightly, and listens to the new song. It’s higher pitched, reminds more of the sand blowing across a desert than a stream, but it’s just as beautiful.

The songs start to change every night, always something beautiful and something that allows Jyn to calm herself down after everyday, when sometimes the world and life seems  a little too much.

It’s something that she can hold onto during the day, wait until night.

And then one night she grows brave, and she hums a song back. There’s a stunned silence on the other side, and then Chirrut responds with a bright melody back. Jyn hums something lower and softer and a tad more mournful, but her heart feels a little like bursting as she and Chirrut hum together until she falls asleep, sinks into the warm embrace of sleep after feeling the one belonging to family.

**_four_ **

Baze is a physical man, Jyn has noticed. He likes to touch the people he cares about, a hand on a shoulder or an arm, a warm smile crossing his face as he talks to them. Jyn considers it a high honor that he considers her one of those people, that he’ll touch her shoulder during a discussion, wrap her up in a hug after she manages to pull through another mission by the skin of her teeth.

She sinks into his strong embrace, lets her head rest on his chest, and closes her eyes for just a moment, before pulling herself away and forcing herself to move on to something else.

She’s still getting use to touch that isn’t during a fight or from a quick fuck on some backwater planet just so that she can remember what it feels like to touch someone again. She thinks that she’s hidden it well, that no one else has really noticed, but it doesn’t take her long to realize that Baze has noticed.

He doesn’t say anything to the others, none of whom are very physical themselves, so they don’t see the need to touch her all the time. But Baze, who automatically touches people like he needs it, he notices and he just . . . touches her.

He puts a hand on her shoulder when they’re talking. He messes up her hair when she makes a terrible joke that Chirrut will repeat for the next week. He just makes her feel grounded, and Jyn isn’t sure how to talk to him about it.

Because she doesn’t want him to stop, because she knows that he will if she says or does anything to indicate that she doesn’t like the touches, but she wants to know why he is even bothering to do it.

She doesn’t why he cares about her, why he calls her “little sister” when he pulls her into this those post-mission hugs. He touches the other’s too, but not as much. Neither Bodhi or K-2 seem to notice the increased contact between her and Baze, but Chirrut smiles whenever he sees it and Cassian. . . . Actually Cassian smiles too. Like he knows how much she needs it, and he’s not judging, and it’s strange how much she cares about his opinion, but she’s glad that he has it.

And she decides to be selfish and indulge herself by not asking him any questions at all. She takes his hugs and his touches and his hair musses because while she might not deserve them, she so desperately wants them and Baze certainly doesn’t seem to mind.

And that’s what matters, she thinks.

**_five_ **

Cassian likes to read. Jyn will often see him in downtown reading a book, and it changes frequently. He never talks about it, never seems to want to draw attention it, but he likes to read and Jyn wants to talk to him about it.

She just doesn’t know how.

Suddenly going up to Cassian to talk about a mission or something pertaining to the Rebellion? That’s not a problem, she knows he’s always willing to talk about it and she’s never worried about rejection. Talking to him about what he’s reading scares her, because he might reject her, might turn her down.

Might make it clear that he wants nothing to do with her other than what she can bring to a mission.

She tells herself that she’s being ridiculous, but she always wonder if she really is. Cassian is polite around her and he’s always acted friendly, but he might just be doing so to avoid weird confrontations and to make things easier for the others.

So Jyn does her best to ignore him and to ignore his books as she simply focuses on the mission.

So of course, Cassian is the one who brings up the books. He catches her trying to read the jacket of one, and all he does is say, “it’s decent, but I think it’s not the author’s best work. They do better with historical books than modern.”

“Oh,” Jyn says, jumping now that he’s noticed her. “Uh, thank you. Thank you very much.”

Cassian shrugs. “If you ever have any other questions, let me know.”

It’s permission and it’s strange and Jyn manages to keep the smile off her face.

She immediately starts to track down the author’s historical books, hoping to have something to talk about with Cassian.

Slowly but surely, she does.

She talks to him about not only that particular author, but everything to do with books. Jyn didn’t have much to do other than train with Saw, and she never had any friends other than those she could read in the books she’s been able to get her hands on. Her grasp on languages other than Common tends to be much better in the written word rather than the spoken one, thanks to all the different books she had found and how she had to stumble through them with a dictionary and a prayer in many cases. Cassian seems to be impressed by this fact, and Jyn forces herself not to preen.

One night, they talk so long about books in the mess hall, actually laughing at small points, they miss how it clears out until they’re the only people remaining inside.

All she’s done is focus on Cassian’s smile and how the light makes his eyes look brighter and how some hair has fallen in front of his face, and she desperately wants to push it out of his way.

With a jolt in her stomach, she realizes she wants to kiss him.

She pushes that thought out of her mind, goes to work on the next mission, to read the next book, but it keeps on popping up in her thoughts.

It’s not the first time she’s ever liked someone, she’s had crushes on fighters in her youth, and Jyn’s not some blushing virgin, she’s fucked many people before she joined the Rebellion, but there’s something different about Cassian. She isn’t fantasizing about an imaginary relationship or trying to stave out loneliness, but she enjoys his presence and she hopes that he enjoys hers.

She even reads to him when he’s injured after a mission, smiling whenever he pulls her into another tangent of discussion about the plot or the characters. The peace and the banter is nice, the way the other’s trickle in and join in on the conversations, or merely watching them debate, and it feels like a family and it scares her with how much that doesn’t scare her.

So she looks at him as he hands her a new book and starts talking about everything he loved about it, and smiles.

When she’s a little more certain, she’s going to tell him how she feels.

She knows that she’s going to be around to tell him.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed the fic! It was so much fun to write. :)


End file.
